skill point investment/Ability comparisons and imbalnaces

[Good_Ole_Lefty]

I've been playing UO since 99 and one thing has really nagged me over the years is the plain skill point investment imbalances with different template types.

This is most noticable on warrior type templates. Overall they have less room for skills vs a Mage type template.

The root of the problem on most warrior templates are 3 skills.

Healing + Anatomy required to cure, rez and heal sufficently. Then of course you have.

Anatomy + Tactics to get common base damage out of weapons.

The imbalance

To cure with healing and Anatomy you need a minimum of 60 heaing and 60 anatomy. 120 skill points. As for resurection 81/81 minimum. 160 skill points. As for effective in pvp 90/81 is basement utilization. 171 Points.

Now with magery the effectiveness is determined by skill level, but of course it is not nearly that high. To rez with magery you need 80 skill points invested. For chiv noble sacrafice it is just 60.

Damage - As stated above warriors have anatomy & tactics. That's 2 damage skills. Magery of course has Eval and both types have a bonus damage modifier skill such as inscription for mages, and LJ for warriors.

The delima. Basicly it's double the skill point investment to get the ability vs other template types.

Possible solutions - The healing skill alone should be able to cure/rez on it's own, while anatomy will still give a healing bonus. Furthermore Anatomy damage bonus should be scaled down to 25% while tactics would make up 75% of the base damage bonus. Thus Anatomy would be just a bonus skill much like LJ and Inscribe and thus not required. The end result would allow warrior type templates to add focus/med as well as magic resist.

 

[imported_Sarphus]

oh, I thought you were going to talk about chivalry and how with 80 skill pts you can have as much power as most skills have at 120 skill pts.

 

[Hunters' Moon]

I am with you on this. To add to your idea,I would like to see tacticas and anatomy to be made one skill to free up 100 points to my "pure warrior". Also,if possible,remove all ubws and make all weapons,save bows,into one skill. Whoever heard of a warrior that can use the sword with ease but can't use a dagger because it has a pointy end?

Swordsman: "aww man my sword broke and all I have is this pointy blade...how do you use this again? This pointy blade just has me completely confused"

 

[imported_S!ckLoveR]

Sure you can swing just about any object at someone but if you want to learn the true "secrets" and tactics of a weapon or a weapon category in Ultima's case you'll really have to dedicate yourself to it.

Take martial arts, right? You'll practice using a few generic types of weapons like a sword, a knife and a staff and as you progress you'll get into the more exotic ones, or ones used/built specifically for some purpose. Eventually you'll stick with a specific weapon because of personal preference/style and while you'll be able to swing the rest and probably often succeed, you will never be a true master.

Then there's logic : You won't want to carry a large battle axe just to backstab(back-axe?) someone. There won't be enough space up close, etc. It's all about the job you want to get done. I suppose kryss fans and such prefer to think their character as an assassin.. see what I mean?

Ahhh there's also the endless debate of whether taking up many styles is better than dedicating one's self to mastering a single art... Let's not start it here, there are enough weapon/martial arts forums.

In Ultima it's just balanced. Plus a secondary weapon skill helps you with your mana reduction. No harm! (Aren't you just about contradicting yourself anyway?)

 

[Good_Ole_Lefty]

I myself like the weapon skills as they are. There are different tactics with different weapons, but I think some weapons should get more than 2 specials as well as open up some new specials with wrestling which would give more dynamics to combat.

But back on topic, freeing up some elbow room for warrior templates would be a good idea and am at the time unable to think of any template imbalance with all the PvP caps and requisites put into place.

If something like this would be put in place you could run a well balanced warrior template.

Samurai

Swords
Parry
Tactics
Bushido
Healing
Resist or go with a 7 skill template and include focus or med.

Ninja

Fencing
Ninjitsu
Hiding
stealth
tactics
healing

 

[eolsunder1]

Well there is alot of differences between old warrior skills and the new "special" warriors.

The old basic tactics/anatomy/resist/etc warriors are worthless in every catagory. Tactics and anatomy become basically useless overall over 100 in comparison to their skill point cost. Going from 100 tactics/anatomy to 120 tactics/anatomy is basically a waste of 40 skill points which can be put into another skill to gain more overall usefulness.

Also, regular warriors gain no basic skills other than their weapons. In order to have the power of paladins, samurai, ninja, necro, you need those special abilities, which are vastly superior than NOT having special abilities.

Make a warrior to fight monsters without Enemy of one and consecrate weapon? yea right, thats laughable. And about 5 years out of date. Since monsters have elemental weakness's now, and the chance to get a decent weapon with 100% property is about nil, the staff had to give out such weapons as minors/arties/drops. Even the top of the line weapons are not good against monsters unless you have your consecrate weapon to actually do good damage against them.

Then you have the huge benefits of the other 4 abilities (paladin, necro, samurai, ninja). Pretty much makes them NEEDED to compete in pvp AND pvm. The regular warrior disappeared 5 years ago. The "mix-mash" warrior is now the norm.

As to the topic of the origional post, its misleading. Warrior skills overlap. Anatomy contributes both to healing and damage, so you can't say its 1 of 2 skills needed for healing. It might be 1.5 skills needed for healing since you gain benefits in other areas. Also, warrior healing can be used in conjunction with attacking. Mages cannot. A mage can't cast a healing spell and a fireball at the same time. A warrior can attack and heal at the same time.

The above comparison is not valid in any way, and has been discussed many times.

 

[Good_Ole_Lefty]

I think you missed the point of the topic. As for saying it is not valid.. Ok why should a warrior based template invest double the skill points for an ability say cure or base damage vs the investment of a mage type template?

 

[Guest]

I also agree that it is a little off kilter that it takes 2 base skills for a mage to have offensive and healing + SDI and it takes a warrior 3 base skills for the same thing. Anatomy should never have been required for healing, it should be DI bonus only. If this had been the case, it never would have been necessary to add in healing methods to things like Chivalry and Bushido. Anatomy could have been an accessory option - if you are a mage it buff's your healing spells, and if you are a warrior it buffs you bandage healing, but more along the lines of being an option for defensive benefits in the same way Inscription and Lumberjacking are offensive benefits.

Also, you would think there should be other accessory skills like LJ for things like swords and kryss's, for short swords/daggers, for maces (especially since the removal of the chance to break your opponents armor), etc.

If you did both those things (removed the necessity of Anatomy and made it a bonus skill, and added bonus skills that are effective with all mele-types) it would balance eachother out.

Another thing is that the removal of the dex penalty added to the armor changes making leather armor as powerful or more so as metal armor caused the imballance of archers that were followed by all the nerfs. Originally archers could not use parry (same as now) and ALSO had to use lightweight armor (less defense) to minimize the dex penalty, making them far more vulnerable, and therefore balancing the power of ranged attack. This was true of mages, as well, because of the need for medable armor (only leather - the least protection).

 

[Guest]

What's the point value of healing working while other actions are being taken?

 

[Basara]

Was gonna point that out myself...

Some of the other numbers are flawed as well.

Noble Sacrifice takes 65 skill, and that's for a 0.2% chance, compared to 25% base for healing's resurrection at 81/81 skills.

Healing has to be 90 for HP recovery heals to be 100% chance of success (before reductions for slips, etc.).

I agree that Anatomy & tactics are pretty useless over 100 - but the devs need to reconsider the tactics requirements for special moves and make the tactics not require real skill (or lower it to 50 real tactics for primary, 70 real for secondary). After all, it's a support skill, not the main one, and special moves hadn't worked for mage weapons for YEARS before the change (at least, for my PVM mage) - yet that was a reason given for the change. God, I WISH they did - that mage carries GM tactics and 80 chiv to pepper large targets with arrows while her summons beat down the target, which does more DoT than the summons or spells and uses a lot less mana to boot.

The progression for the spell-like skills for combat needs to be changed to encourage higher skills, and they should be made that if you have one of them, the rest of them are limited to half the highest one's skill level. I HATE hybrid templates of that type; Paladins, Samurai, Ninjas and Necros are all based on specific codes of conduct, which are opposed to tenets in each of the others' codes.

 

[Guest]

<blockquote><hr>

What's the point value of healing working while other actions are being taken?

[/ QUOTE ]4 seconds to heal is the value. Although I do think it should be possible to cause so much "slippage" as to totally disrupt healing.